Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

Recently with bike guys a topic came up that tuners using alcohol as a fuel can or do blend in water for more power...Some of it cam from guys not know for BS strories... Not talking about injecting water/alcohol for detonation control, but adding water to alcohol used as the only fuel. ....Some claim the proof is an alcohol fueled engine runs stronger on a cool humid night...
Any truth to this for N/A or supercharged engines?

For N/A engines, I have found that even a small percent of water in methanol, usually there because alcohols will absorb moisture right out of humid air, causes a decrease in power. When Methanol's specific gravity gets to .800, it is about 4% water,and there are noticable power losses with oval track
engines even before getting to 4% water.

I hope not, I always went to great lengths to keep it "dry". Gave away the leftovers after a month or two and bought fresh

Methanol is a warm weather fuel best used on hot turbo engines.

Yup, water in the methanol does nothing but making tuning a head scratcher.
Injected separately seems to have some merit.

I sell a metric ton of nozzles to diesel pullers.
They run ridiculous compression along with ginormous turbos.
The water is injected separately to counter detonation.
That alone always seemed odd to me since a diesel is more or less a detonation monster anyway.

Some are injecting the water at 900 lbs.
I asked one fellow if at that pressure and the small nozzles does it turn to steam?
The answer was shrug, maybe.
chuckle So, you really have gone backwards 120 years and are actually running steam engines?

As near as I can tell they keep adding water until the smoke goes white then back off a bit.

Once in a while I get the impression that some of them have come to believe that water is a fuel.
Kind of like some nitrous guys that think nitrous is a fuel.
It's a discussion that I have learned to not even bother to address.

Diesel pullers run it to help cool the intake charge. It takes it from about 750 deg intake temp down to about 300 deg without an intercooler. Most guys are running about 1:1 fuel to water ratio.